There Were Giants in the Earth
As your remember last week, Will Robinson had ventured outside late at night, in an attempt to fix the Chariot. He is confronted by the robot, which has announced its intentions to destroy all non-essential personnel, and made an awesome display of the destructive potential of its electrical weapon. Frightened, Will takes shelter on the roof of the Chariot and calls the Jupiter 2 by radiophone. As the robot approaches with murderous intent. Will attempts to stop him by imitating Dr. Smith's voice. He orders the robot to halt for a routine check of its circuits. The robot accepts the command and Will tests him using a series of chess moves, which he recites without needing to refer to a chessboard. As long as Will continues the test, he has distracted the robot from its destructive mission. Will is still involved in the intricate verbal chess game when his parents arrive. Meanwhile Dr. Smith is in the galley preparing a favorite meal. Don retrieves him, and Dr. Smith is able to approach the robot and remove his power pack. Smith proclaims himself as Will's rescuer and congratulates Will on his ingenuity. The family, and especially Don, are nevertheless highly suspicious. John Robinson calls a family conference. He announces that in order to survive, they will need to turn the area around the ship into a self-sufficient community. He sternly warns Dr. Smith that everyone will participate in the work. The work projects begin. John and Don work to deploy a force field projector that will provide the campsite with security. Judy and Penny plant a hydroponic garden. Will repairs a visual scanner at the ship. The Chariot is repaired and returned to camp. Dr. Smith mostly shirks performing any labor. At the hydroponic garden site, he insists on planting pea seeds in the native soil of the planet, despite its unknown properties. Later an alarmed Judy discovered that pea plants have quickly grown, with pea pods of enormous size. Dr. Smith approaches and suggests that there is nothing to be alarmed at. He points out that just one of the pods should furnish days of nourishment. With a pen knife, he opens the pod. Unfortunately instead of giant peas, it contains worm-like creatures. Smith jumps back in terror and Judy screams. Will appears with a laser gun and swiftly dispatches the worms with a single shot. Later, in the laboratory, John announces that the pods contained a microscopic parasitic life form which pervades the soil of the planet. The Robinsons later learn to grow plants in the native soil of the planet, but are puzzled to find the plants dying from what appears to be subfreezing temperatures at night. Don and John visit a weather station they have established in nearby mountainous terrain to investigate. After reading several weather instruments, John announces that temperatures will drop precipitously over the next few days to as low as 125 degrees below zero. The only hope is to abandon the ship and head south in the Chariot. Just as the duo are absorbing this disturbing news, they discover a gigantic footprint. They are soon to discover the maker of the footprint, a gigantic cyclops. Don attempts to scare the giant away with a flare. Instead the giant is angered, and attacks the pair. Don and John seek shelter in a cave. The giant uproots a tree and pokes it into the cave in an attempt to crush Don and John. Just when all seems lost, a laser blast downs the giant. Will Robinson spotted the giant on a visual scanner and has come to the rescue. John rushes to his young son and sternly asks him why he left the safety of the campsite. He thanks Will for saving them, but reminds him that his duty was to protect the rest of the family back home. John offers his little son his jacket for warmth, and they head home. Dr. Smith is appalled. John wants the entire party to head south as the only hope for avoiding the intense cold that is about to engulf the area. Smith refuses to leave the ship with the others. The Chariot is readied for departure, but Penny is missing. John dons a jet pack and goes in search of her. It turns out that she has been off riding an alien turtle and has gotten lost. John ferries her home piggyback on the jet pack, with Debbie the bloop along for the ride as well. John and Penny arrive back at the ship just in time for the departure of the Chariot, which John ordered must take place when the temperature reached ten degrees below zero. The party departs and heads southward. Unfortunately, along their path lies the giant's valley and they encounter a giant which throws several gigantic boulders at the Chariot. Fortunately, it misses every time. From the gun hatch of the Chariot, Don downs the giant with a laser beam. The chariot slowly drives past the dead giant as the family looks on in silence, with Debbie the Bloop beating at the window. The southward odessey continues. Don realizes that one of the Chariot's systems was damaged by the boulders, and the party camps for the night. At the campsite, Will treats us to his rendition of Greensleaves, while Don repairs the Chariot with Judy's assistance. Penny notices that Don kissed Judy on the hand, a sign of their budding relationship. The next day the Robinson party is again on the move, but now they are threatened by a spectacular lightning storm of un-earthly proportions. They seek shelter in a cave, which they discover contains the archeological ruins of a long-dead alien city. Will, Penny, Don, and Judy become trapped in a sealed chamber as a menacing planetquake threatens to bring city ruins crashing down on them. John rushes to the rescue using his laser gun to cut throught the walls of the chamber. Will he succeed in time? Tune in next week, same time, same channel.... Notes on Scientific Accuracy "Data inaccurate... data inaccurate... humanoid not 18 meters tall" -the robot The most interesting alien creatures in this episode were the cyclopian giants, resembling those in Greek mythology. Could a humanoid actually be 18 meters tall? Eighteen meters is roughly ten times normal human height. If a human being were scaled up ten-fold in size, its bones would be ten times as thick as those of a normal sized human. However, volume does not scale linearly with size. A ten-times bigger human would have one thousand times the volume of a normal human. One thousand times the volume would mean one thousand times the weight. The giant's bones would be far to thin and fragile to support this much weight. Thus, assuming flesh and bone like ours, 18 meter tall giants are not possible. Background Information *Having Smith and the Robot stay at the ship allows reuse of the pilot episode footage of the journey south. *The title of this episode is taken from Genesis 6:4. *Will plays the guitar and sings "Greensleeves", which was the theme song to the "Lassie" TV show, which starred June Lockhart. *Penny plays with a turtle, leftover from the unaired pilot, "No Place to Hide". *Smith reveals the ability to cook. *Science takes a back seat to adventure here with respect to the giant. Unless the planet's gravity was weaker than Earth's (which is never stated) or the giant's skeleton was made of some super tough alloy, he would fall victim to Galileo's Square Cube Law and collapse. *This marks the first time that the jetpack is used in the series. The famous music that accompanies it, contrary to belief, was not written by John Williams or any other of the show's composers: it was in fact, the track 'The marker' by Bernard Herrmann, part of the soundtrack for the film 'the Twelve Mile Reef'. The eerie music played in the ancient city is from 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' and was also used in the pilot. *This is also the first episode that shows the planet Priplanis was once inhabited by humanoids, albeit ones that did not seem to advance beyond the equivalent of Earth's ancient civilizations like Babylon or Egypt. *Deleted scenes for this episode would have had the Cyclops in a friendly interaction with Penny, who gives the creature a flower. Later, the same Cyclops approaches Smith and the Robot thinking they are also friendly - Smith panics and has the Robot blast the giant, who drops the flower and runs off. Shot for the pilot but similarly unused was a sequence where Professor Robinson, on the jetpack, runs into the giant in flight- after being grabbed he manages to shoot the creature and get away. *The Robot turns off the force field in order to leave the campsite. But, in "The Raft" we find out that the force field only works one way and only stops objects that are approaching. This means that the robot didn't have to turn off the force field. *The title card shows the Jupiter 2 has crashed in such a way that the upper deck is a few feet above ground level and the lower deck is somewhat visible. Over the first season the upper deck becomes level with the ground outside, suggesting the ship is settling. *The Jupiter 2 scene where they are watching the Cyclops on the telescope, appears to be missing the airlock compartment. The door opens directly into the control room of the ship. Also footage from the pilot is reused. *Will claims that he's using a radio telescope to view the Cyclops, which is impossible since that instrument does not work with visible light. *The Cyclops was supposed to have a functioning, blinking eye but this was vetoed by Irwin Allen because of the cost. Next: The Hungry Sea Category:Episodes Category:Episodes in Season One